Could you tell us the story behind the founding of Onyx Coffee Lab?
The founders are Jon and Andrea Allen. Andrea was the manager of a local coffee shop and one day someone called out. She asked her boyfriend at the time, Jon, to come and work the register. He came and loved the cafe environment and started working there too. The time came where the owners were selling that location, and Jon and Andrea gathered the funds and bought that location. That was the beginning of Onyx Coffee Lab.
Jon is very curious about where everything comes from. So, he started digging into where they were getting coffee and started figuring out how to roast it. Then Andrea started competing professionally as a barista. In the specialty coffee world, there are trade shows along with competitions. She started entering the barista competitions and in 2020, became the US National Barista champion. She went to compete in worlds and came in second two years in a row. That shows her determination, attention to detail – all the while having children and all the while being a business owner.
Where they thrive and how they break up the business is that Jon is very much on the coffee sourcing side and also the creative side. He heads up our design and marketing teams to create the visual look of Onyx and how it’s all packaged. His work ethos is the motivation behind our mission statement of “never settle for good enough.” We’re always thinking about what’s next, always striving for the best of what we do in every category. Andrea focuses on what happens inside our cafes, quality drinks, operations and hospitality; making people feel warm and welcomed. She is also very present with our sales team guiding us on a vision for wholesale partnerships like this one. We’re in our 12th year now, based in Rogers, Arkansas. We have four cafes, one restaurant and are expanding within Arkansas.
What do you think sets Onyx apart from other coffee brands?
I think it is that attention to detail, that search for never settling for good enough, and always striving for the best, whether it’s with coffee, chocolate, tea or showing compassion for every part of the coffee supply chain from farm to cup. We strive to make the best coffee in the world, and I think we do.
How do you envision the future of the coffee industry sort of evolving? And how is Onyx positioning itself to stay ahead of these market trends?
Experimental processing is ever evolving. That has become a really interesting part of the coffee world where producers are trying different ways to make their coffees taste different. That in turn changes the way we enjoy coffee as well as the techniques of brewing coffee. Coffee is a never ending well of info so we are always learning and creating. And then we have a team of coffee experts that are making coffee all day long, changing recipes seasonally, experimenting with flavours in our drinks and pushing the norm. I think that is how we stay ahead, we keep those creative juices flowing all across our company while supporting where that’s happening in the industry.
Could you explain the importance of your coffee roasting process and how do you ensure that each batch that you produce meets the quality standards?
We roast on Dietrichs, which are gas powered and a Loring, which is electric. We also have solar panels. So some of the power is coming from the sun – that’s really important to us. Every time that we roast a batch of coffee, it’s entered into a program called Cropster. Cropster remembers what that roast profile is, and then we get to see a grid of it. When you roast coffee, you’re putting that room temperature, maybe even cold, raw bean into a very hot drum. Once that coffee goes into the drum, then you’ve got to start heating up that coffee bean. That’s where that roast curve happens, and that’s when all the sugars develop as the raw bean turns from green to brown. In those processes, we know exactly what’s happening scientifically and we’re able to adjust the heat to make sure those sugars develop in a way that we want them to. We know based on where the coffee is coming from, what its terroir tells us, plus experience how to roast that coffee to get the best flavours out of that beautiful bean.
Once that coffee is roasted, every single batch is cupped. Cupping is a universally recognised and agreed upon method of evaluating coffee. Looks like a lineup of little bowls brewing minis cups of coffee. After a few minutes of brewing the cupper will take her spoon and break the crust, revealing gorgeous aromas. You start sipping it at timed intervals as it cools down. That’s when we start slurping rather “cupping” the coffee. We look for attributes like acidity, sweetness, balance, mouthfeel and overall flavour. Every single batch is cupped to make sure it stands up to our quality standards and what we think it should taste like. You can see all of this work on the bottom of every box, where we stamp that batch number. So every customer can look at the bottom of their box and refer to the batch number and see about that roast profile and who roasted it. All that accountability and transparency is on every single box.
Do you have any upcoming projects or innovations that you want to share with us?
If our customers head to Arkansas, we are opening a new cafe, which will feature our chocolate process – so we’re actually making a chocolate factory. The chocolate line is called Terroir, headed up by our chocolatier, Preston Stewart. At this new Onyx Cafe chocolate will take centre stage.
Another exciting thing to mention is that we are roasting out of our newly launched International Roasting Collective in Rotterdam. We will be able to roast and ship more efficiently, sustainably and more cost effectively for our EU and International Hotel Partners.
